Distributed ledgers provided in, for example, a peer-to-peer network, such as the distributed ledger used in the Bitcoin cryptocurrency system, rely on a consensus system agreed upon by participants on the peer-to-peer network in order to add blocks of data to the distributed ledger. In such systems, participants examine proposed data blocks in order to verify that they conform to a network agreed standard, rather than relying on a third-party trusted central authority to authorize the addition of data.
However, it may be impractical to use a file, in a flat-file format, which comprises data of the distributed ledger, in order to access the data contained therein efficiently. As a result, those skilled in the art know to implement a database system to extract the data from the distributed ledger and insert it into said database system, to facilitate searches for specific data entries.
Although the file, which constitutes a chain of data comprising the distributed ledger, may have a predetermined set of rules for ensuring blocks are added to the file representing the distributed ledger in a manner accepted by participants on the peer-to-peer network, nevertheless some of a data of interest encapsulated within a block may take many different unspecified or unpredictable formats.
It is currently the case that consensus systems used in distributed ledgers specify a format that an encapsulating data must take, that is: how a block links to a previous block within the chain, what format digital signatures within the block should comply with, and how hashes of the data of interest should be ordered and structured. However, the format of the data of interest encapsulated within the block are generally either unrestricted, or restricted at a launch of the distributed ledger and subsequently unalterable.
As a result there is a problem, in that a structure of tables within the database used to extract the distributed ledger data, and a permitted contents of such tables, are not well-defined.
It is therefore the intention of the present disclosure to address the problem of ensuring that a transaction or submission containing the data of interest submitted to the peer-to-peer network for inclusion in the distributed ledger has a format and structure that is agreed upon by participants on the peer-to-peer network, in order to ensure that the corresponding structure and contents of the plurality of databases are consistent, that is to say, that a consistent schema for the plurality of databases is defined and updated through the distributed ledger under a consensus of the peer-to-peer network.